he read a book!

THE DAY I READ A BOOK

(click Jimmy's photo to hear him sing this song!) ...... Jimmy Durante

When I look back through life I find,
Lots of memories remain,
Certain days stay in my mind
And keep running through my brain,
I remember the day that Ederle swam the channel, what a splash.
I remember the Wall St. Crash
Or when Winchell first shouted, “Flash!”
But there’s one day that I recall though it was years ago.
All my life I will remember it, I know.

I'll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious, seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
So it wasn't hard to bear,
The day I read a book.
It's a shame I don't recall the name of the book.
It wasn't a history, I know, because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book. I can't remember when,
But one o' these days, I'm gonna do it again.

Ah, lit'rature!
There's nothin' like sittin' home next to the fireplace, with a pipe, a dog, and a good book at your feet.
But if you walk into my house, you’ll see loads of books.
And believe they are not there just for appearance.
I press an awful lot of butterflies.
My literary appetite is “stupendious.”
They don’t write them quick enough for me.
The book of the month didn’t come out fast enough,

So I read the book of the week!
The book of the week didn’t come out fast enough,
So I read the book of the day!
The book of the hour!
The book of the minute!
But that wasn’t even fast enough.
So far this week I’ve read six books that haven’t been written yet!
But I’m not confined to home reading.
I once spent two weeks in library.
I would have been outta there sooner,
But I had buried my nose in a book and forgot which book I buried it in!
A “dilemmia.”

Why on the first page of this book they printed the author’s name,
And right underneath it was a private phone number.
Copyright-1-9-3-9.
But I’m gonna send it back.
I’ve been dialing that number for four months
and nobody has answered.
Nevertheless, while perusing through the library,
I found the tract that I was looking for.
It wasn’t the Encyclopedia “Britannia”!
It wasn’t Ferverum Briago.
It was a book that was 3,857 pages thick.
And I’m glad I took it!
It fit perfectly under the short leg of my pool table!

It was not a history, I know because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book.
I can't remember when,
But one o' these days,




I'm gonna do it again.
Yes, and one of these days,
I’m gonna do it again!

will you still love me?

LUCKIES

The loop of rusty cable incises
its shadow on the stucco wall.
My father smiles shyly and takes
one of my cigarettes, holding it

awkwardly at first,
as if it were
a dart, while the yard slowly
swings across the wide sill
of daylight.
Then it is a young man’s
quick hand

that rises to his lips, he leans against the wall,
his white shirt open at the throat,
where the skin is weathered, and
he chats and
daydreams,

something he never does.

Smoking his cigarette,
he is even
younger than I am,
a brother who
begins to guess,
amazed, that what
he will do will turn out
to be this.

He recalls the house
he had
when I was born, leaning against it
now after work, the pale stucco
of memory, 1947.

Baby bottles stand near the sink inside.
The new wire of the telephone, dozing
in a coil, waits for the first call.

The years are smoke.

Reginald Gibbons (also born 1947)

“Luckies” from The Ruined Motel. Copyright © 1981 by
Reginald Gibbons. All rights reserved.

in its own way

THIS BE THE VERSE

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy- stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

though only tangentially related to the rest of the post, for some glimpses of japan around the times that we often discuss, have a look at this.

cross-cultural studies II

Queen Victoria said: "I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety.

"Feminists ought to get a good whipping.

"Were woman to 'unsex' them- selves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection." 1

During the Edo and Meiji (1868-1912 A.D.) periods, women were considered worthy of a certain amount of education.

Every girl, except those in the lower classes, was trained in the domestic and aesthetic arts.

This education included learning the Japanese written language, the Chinese classics, poetry, music, etiquette, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, calligraphy and painting, and in some areas, dancing.

Such talents were considered suitable for a proper woman and wife. 2

The Tal- mud- ists aver that teach- ing women to read is tiflut “unbe- coming behavior, sexual license, [and] a waste of time.”

The strictures they instituted blocking women from access to reading literacy, the minimum needed for participation in religious ritual was, until the seventh- century and only in Europe, carefully adhered.

Before that time few women in any Jewish population were reading much less writing literate.

Without the ability to record their lives for posterity, including their very much needed participation in holy days such as Passover, the experiences of half of the Jewish people have been and to a large extent continue to be ignored. 3

Surveys consistently find that women read more books than men, especially fiction. Explanations abound, from the biological differences between the male and female brains, to the way that boys and girls are introduced to reading at a young age. 4

throughout time and cultures, the idea that women should be taught to read has been suspect at best. but once again one thing becomes increasingly clear. in japan you really don't need to have red hair to read.

we are waiting

“The sense of waiting here strikes strong;

Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me;

What are you waiting for so long?—

What is to happen?” I said.

from Fragment, by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

“Waiting to …”
“Who is?”
“We are …

 Was that the night- owl's cry?”
“I heard not. But see! the evening star;
And listen!—the ocean's solacing sigh.”
“You mean the surf at the harbour bar?”
“What did you say?”

“Oh, ‘waiting.’”
“‘Waiting?’
Waiting what for?”

from Waiting, by Walter De la Mare (1873–1956)

the chronicling poet

thanks to the work of a handful of poets, trans- lators, and publishers, we have become aware of a number of poets and novelists, women in early japan. now, though, the voices of the diarists are coming through as well.

in Bettina Gramlich-Oka's fas- cinating essay, Tokugawa Women and Spacing the Self , we are introduced to the lives and work of three such women, Rai Shizuko (or Baishi) (1760-1842), Tadano Makuzu(1763-1825), and Iseki Takako (1785-1844). in excerp- ting (dramatically) the essay, i will let each woman speak for herself.

shizuku:












Omou koto ........................ Without a thought,
nakute mimashiya ........................... for a while, I only
to bakari ni ....................................... observe,
nochi no koyohi zo .................... but later this evening
tsuki ni nakinuru ................... I will shed tears under
the moon. (1800/9/13)

o no naka ni ................... Whatever in the world
michi yori soto wa .................................. lies outside
nanigoto mo ................................ the Way,
supporapon no........................................ throw
pon ni shite oke ........................................ away!

makuzu:

My father Heisuke had five daughters. He wished to marry one of them to a retainer [of the Date house], but none of my sisters said she would go. While they feigned ignorance of our father’s hope, one by one their life courses were decided. I realized that if I did not act, my father’s wish would go unfulfilled, so I set aside my own desires and moved to this place.

Having made up my mind, I resolved to return to my father the body he had given me and, resigning myself to my life being over at the age of thirty-five, set out on a journey of no return. There was little to it, I thought, since it was better than the road to death. Whatever hardships I encountered after arriving here, I endured, thinking them better than the tortures of hell. But ever since [my brother] Motosuke left this world, my mind has not been at ease. I wrote this book [Hitori kangae] thinking that unless I pursued my father’s goals, he would have developed his ideas in vain.

As for half-baked scholars, their thinking is full of errors; the more they gather together, the more they argue without producing wisdom. This is the general situation among scholars. In what way do they differ from frogs?

Since I am a woman lacking in knowledge, I have stated whatever I wanted to without a second thought. Please correct my writings according to your judgment.

I have written this entire text without any sense of modesty or concern about being unduly outspoken…With this in mind, I feel neither pain nor irritation at being criticized by others.

takako:

What I am now writing, with my inadequate intelligence and clumsy brush, is not intended to be broadcasted to the world. I am writing this in order to let the young people of my family and their children in future generations know a little of how our family lives today and what our world is like. No doubt these scraps of paper will become the haunt of bookworms or be dragged off by mice for their nests, but even if that happens, it will make a wonderful diversion. (1840/2/12)